The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird 189 



their young. J'frhaps it miiy ha\"c to do willi the very (juick tc'nii)ers of the 

 pair; incubatin<f may prove very trying to Mrs. Ruby, and so her spouse 

 thinks discretion the better part of valor! 



After the nesting season is over, the males are seen again about the flow- 

 ers, though greatly outnumbered by Hummers lacking the ruby throat. This, 

 however, is easily accounted for by the fact that the young of the year, ];olh 

 males and females, are plumed like the mother. 



One spectacle concerning the home life of the Ruby-throat is rather awfuli 

 until you fully understand the cause, and know that the mother is not trying: 

 to choke her children to death. She feeds them by regurgitation; that is, she 

 pumps the food, first softened in her own crop, down the little throats by means 

 of her own beak, which she thrusts into their gaping mouths. Early bird 

 students saw this process the other way about, saying that Hummers, Pigeons^ 

 etc., pushed their beak into their parents' crops for food, — hence the terrrb 

 "sucking doves." 



In the Hummingbird, we have a species that makes its ap{)eal through 

 beauty of form and grace of flight, rather than through any economic consid- 

 eration. Beauty as an excuse for being has, however, long since been accepted 

 as a fact. And yet it was through beauty that, at one time, this elusive 

 little bird was almost doomed to extinction, for it is not so many years ago 

 when a wreath of Hummingbirds upon a festal hat was not a rare sight. Pul> 

 lie opinion, in the United States at least, will no longer stand for such sense- 

 less waste and barbarity. Of no use for food, a difficult prey for either cat or 

 snake, the Ruby-throat should escape most of the ills that befall our native 

 birds, and continue with us when larger birds grow rare. Of course, there are 

 always the difficulties of migration to be considered, with the modern danger 

 of electric lights added to the old one of the light-houses, to the lure of which 

 so many feathered creatures yield their lives. For when we consider that this 

 little bird not only nests from Florida up to Labrador, but winters in Central 

 and South America, it is necessary that many must fall by the way. 



Unlike many species of unique plumage or tropical colors, the Humming- 

 bird family belongs entirely to the New World, being most numerous in the 

 mountains of South America. Of the five hundred or more known species, 

 only eighteen reach the United States and but few of these pass far north of 

 our Mexican boundary. 



